Powerlessness Quotes

• If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

  Harry Shearer

  Power, Political, Doe

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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  A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

  Margaret Atwood

  Bad Ass, Voice, Silence

  "Margaret Atwood on a voyage to the world's end" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. August 29, 2009.

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• Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

  Paulo Freire

  Peace, Honesty, Powerful

  Paulo Freire (1985). “The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation”, p.122, Greenwood Publishing Group

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• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

  Henri Nouwen

  Life, Motivational, Friendship

  "Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life". Book by Henri Nouwen, 1974.

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• The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

  Alice Walker

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  256 Copy quote

• There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Mercy Of God, Doe

  Blaise Pascal, James M. Houston (2006). “The Mind on Fire: Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent”, p.53, David C Cook

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• Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many.

  Maggie Kuhn

  Peace, Power, Ubuntu

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• Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness.

  Audre Lorde

  Hands, Silence, Invisibility

  Audre Lorde (1997). “The Cancer Journals”

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• Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there.

  Henri Nouwen

  Jesus, Mean, Home

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• God will allow us to follow self-help, self-improvement programs until we have tried them all, until we finally come to the honest confession, ‘I can't do it. I can't be righteous in my own strength!’ It is then, when we admit our utter powerlessness, that we find hope. For it is then when the Lord intervenes to do a work that we could not do for ourselves.

  Chuck Smith

  Self, Helping, Honest

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• Lack of self-worth is the fundamental source of all emotional pain. A feeling of insecurity, unworthiness and lack of valueis the core experience of powerlessness.

  Gary Zukav

  Relationship, Spiritual, Pain

  FaceBook post by Gary Zukav from Apr 03, 2015

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• Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power.

  Hannah Arendt

  Violence, Arise, Impotence

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• The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.

  Russell Baker

  Environmental, Society, Age

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• Power is being able to say complete and utter nonsense and have it be believed, powerlessness is where no matter how much cogent evidence and proof one has, to not be believed.

  Catharine MacKinnon

  Believe, Power, Utterance

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• Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

  Erica Jong

  Women, Equality, Sisterhood

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• At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

  Erica Jong

  Knows

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.281, Open Road Media

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• In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.

  Theodor Adorno

  Individual, States, Perceive

  Theodor W. Adorno (1978). “Minima Moralia”, p.165, Verso

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• The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

  Theodor Adorno

  Tasks

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.47, Stanford University Press

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• The acknowledgment of powerlessness does empower. We humans are powerless over a whole host of factors and conditions in the world, and mostly we're not bothered by these.

  Peg O'Connor

  Empowering, Doe, World

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.

  Vernon Howard

  Inspirational, Hurt, Fear

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• Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Absolute Power, Absolutes

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1993). “Men and Women of the Corporation”, p.164, Basic Books

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• Poverty is not just a material problem. Poverty is something wider: it is about powerlessness, about being deprived of basic opportunities and freedom of choice.

  Johan Norberg

  Opportunity, Choices, Poverty

  Johan Norberg (2005). “In Defence of Global Capitalism”, p.39, Academic Foundation

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• We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

  Marianne Williamson

  Confidence, Children, Fear

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• The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

  Jane Smiley

  Childhood, Fundamentals, Conditions

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• When the frustration of my helplessness seemed greatest, I discovered God's grace was more than sufficient. And after my imprisonment, I could look back and see how God used my powerlessness for His purpose. What He has chosen for my most significant witness was not my triumphs or victories, but my defeat.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Frustration, Power, Grace

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